Monday DIY: Spiff up a Rental via Inexpensive Lighting Improvement

For today’s DIY, daughter Ashley offers her method for making an apartment into a home by getting rid of the typical apartment lighting fixtures.

One of the realities of owning a rental property is it costs money to make them nice, and most landlords don’t want to spend a lot more than they have to. Even a really nice apartment is going to have the kind of fixtures you find at Home Depot or Lowe’s. No landlord is going to go upscale and shop Expo or Great Indoors. The more expensive lights may look nicer, but the standard ones provide just as much light, so why bother?

Of course, if you’re the tenant, your options are limited; you can’t make substantial changes to the place, and anything you do has to be either approved or reversible, sometimes both. So what can you do with that light fixture in the middle of the living room ceiling, the one that looks like it’s been there since 1959, or worse yet, looks like a glass boob?